


Here be Dragons

by Teegar



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Dragons, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Male Friendship, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-27 15:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teegar/pseuds/Teegar
Summary: Sulu, Chekov, and an irascible engineer are trapped on a planet with a broken shuttle - and telepathic dragons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First, be warned:
> 
> **ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY SWEARS A LOT.**
> 
> And when I say "a lot" I mean as in every other word. Copiously. Continually. Throughout the whole story. Gratuitously. It's just an element of the way he talks.  
> This isn't usual for ST:TOS... or for one of my stories, for that matter.  
> And if it's going to be a problem, hit the back button and no hard feelings, okay?
> 
> Second, this isn't a standard ST: TOS story. It was written as part of a fanfic series called _The Valjiir Continuum_ that's been going on since the late 1970's. This story is a little "side quest" and only has a few references to the many people, places, and events unique to those stories. But don't be alarmed if people are mentioned who you've never heard of with no explanation. This series features several telepathic characters and introduced an empathic race much like the Betazoids years before the premier of ST:TNG.  
> (If you want to read more about Valjiir, here's their Fanlore page: [Valjiir](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Valjiir_Universe) )
> 
> Third, although I've been granted co-author credit, this is really a Mylochka story. I mostly had input on the plot and helped with the "Celeste BeauMonde" story. She wants to use her account for her art only, though, so I'm hosting it here.
> 
> With these caveats firmly in mind, I hope you are now properly prepared to enjoy this story.

# Here Be Dragons

By Mylochka and Teegar

“How ‘bout now?”

Sulu pressed a few buttons on the console before him. “Nothing,” he called back.

“Bastard!” came a displeased reply from the bowels of the _Henderson_.

This experimental vessel had a considerably deeper draft than the typical shuttlecraft. Floorplates spanning the length of the _Henderson_ were thrown open, stripping a good portion of its inner workings bare. 

Chekov frowned down at the man submerged in the shoulder-deep channel that allowed access to the shuttle’s humming mass of machinery. “Was that directed at me?”

Normally such an inquiry would reveal a certain amount of paranoia, but since Noel DelMonde was the engineer assigned to accompany the _Enterprise_ ’s helm team on this small vessel’s shakedown cruise, the navigator’s flaws – both real and imagined – had been commented on as liberally as the _Henderson’s_ shortcomings.

“I think that’s just a technical term engineers use,” Sulu soothed.

“When they don’t know what they’re doing,” Chekov finished peevishly.

“Chekov,” DelMonde called. “C’mere.”

The navigator reached for the ship’s toolkit and prepared to search for whatever instrument the temperamental engineer was about to ask for. “What do you want?”

The Cajun’s head and shoulders appeared above the decking. “To show you how far this laserwrench can be inserted inside the human anatomy.”

“I think you should just leave him alone and let him work,” Sulu advised his helmpartner as the engineer descended back into the _Henderson’s_ belly.

“He better if he values his dumbass Russian mutha-fuckin’ life,” DelMonde muttered loudly.

“In fact, I do value my life,” the navigator retorted, crossing his arms discontentedly. “And I dislike being forced to risk it on a dangerous but highly unnecessary mission like this one.”

“A good deal more dangerous than we thought, I must grant,” Sulu said, clicking out the commands that would initiate another diagnostic sweep. “But unnecessary – no. Star Fleet has got to have their warp-powered shuttle.”

“We already _have_ a warp-powered shuttle,” Chekov insisted, retrieving the handful of photon meters that DelMonde had tossed up onto the deck.

“Ah, but there’s the rub,” Sulu replied. “Just because we on the _Enterprise_ have the _Chuztpah_ does not mean that Star Fleet has the warp-powered shuttle that they need.”

“Surely the design principle is that same.” The navigator hooked the meters into their recharging ports on the toolkit.

“Not as much as you’d expect,” Sulu said, keeping his voice light and pleasant despite the preliminary readings he was getting from the diagnostic program. “You see, when our girls designed the _Chuztpah_ , they had clear and well-defined problem to solve. They needed to get from point A to point B very, very, very quickly.”

“Yes,” Chekov dodged a length of wire that came suspiciously close to hitting him when it was tossed up from below the decking. “I remember.”

“Well, for Star Fleet, point A to point B is only one of many problems. For example, they have to decide if this…” Sulu picked up a discarded piece of metal. “…uhm… widget connector should be made of a material that will throw a big defense contract to a developing planet -- thus solidifying their relationship to the Federation. Or should these photo-electric displays be constructed using Professor Endowed-Chair’s pet theories – thus bringing prestige to Star Fleet Academy – or should they use the method suggested by Dr. Know-it-All from Planet Beta Disgruntled Allies IV– and thus smooth feathers ruffled by the fact those guys didn’t get the widget connector contract? And so on.”

“I see,” Chekov said, retrieving the “widget connector” and placing it with the other spare parts. “So we wind up in this….”

“…Jacked-up, committee-designed, mutha-fuckin’, non-functional piece of mutha-fuckin’ shit,” DelMonde supplied adamantly from below.

“…To use the technical term preferred by professional engineers,” Sulu glossed helpfully.

“…Stranded in space with a malfunctioning experimental warp drive for at least the next 76 hours,” Chekov concluded. 

“Or until I can get the mutha-fuckin’ comm. system working again,” their engineer said in what passed for optimism at this point.

“About that ‘in space’ part…” Sulu said, looking at the newest malfunction indicator on his panel. “Del, you might want to come up here.”

“What the fuck for?”

Sulu rotated his seat to one side so the engineer could see the readings on the life support system. “To help us pick a planet to land on before we suffocate and die.”

“Fuck!!!”

“I certainly hope that’s only a technical term as well,” Chekov said, packing up the toolkit.

*** ** ***

“The seals are intact,” Chekov reported from inside the overturned shuttle.

Sulu had managed to land it…or rather achieve a controlled crash into a clearing in a forested valley. “Are they still under pressure?” the helmsman asked, using his tricorder to catalogue the damage to the hull.

“Uhm…I can’t find the monitor.”

“Del?” Sulu turned to the engineer, who was sitting on the trunk of an uprooted tree using a subdermal regenerator to repair the remaining bruises from the shoulder he’d dislocated during landing.

The Cajun shook his head. “Don’t look at me, _mon ami_. I ain’t goin’ near that piece of shit again.”

Sulu could hardly blame him. They’d scarcely had time to crash the shuttle before the cascade of system failures became super-critical.

“Got it!” Chekov’s voice echoed within the small craft. “Uhm… What would be a normal reading?”

“Keep your day job, son,” DelMonde advised sourly as he began to sort through the medikit’s meager selection of painkillers.

“Come back out, Chekov,” Sulu ordered wearily.

“The readings are constant,” the Russian reported as the top of his head began to reappear through the shuttle’s open doorway. “No matter what they’re supposed to be. So I don’t think there’s any leakage… although there did seem to be a small amount of fluid on the instruments.”

DelMonde gave a short laugh as soon as the navigator’s face became visible. “I think I can figure that one out.”

“What?”

“Your nose is bleeding,” Sulu said, offering him a hand up.

The Russian groaned. “Not again,” he said, disappearing back down into the ship.

“Chekov, I don’t know how long that re-gen unit is going to hold up,” DelMonde warned. “So don’t…”  
  
”What?”

“So don’t make yourself another shirt.”

The Russian reappeared holding a fresh tunic in one hand while he staunched the flow from his nose with the old one. “Sorry.”

DelMonde rolled his eyes. “Get over here and stop trying to blow us all up before I have to smack you.”

“I re-initiated a systems shut down,” the navigator informed Sulu as the helmsman helped him out of the wrecked vessel.

“It’s probably best to get rid of that thing,” Sulu said, indicating the stained uniform top. “Won’t be a good idea to be walking around in the woods smelling like fresh blood.”

“We’ll have to rig a pulley system to upright the vessel,” Chekov said, speculatively eyeing the number of downed trees surrounding the shuttle as he joined DelMonde.

Sulu shook his head and sat on one of the shuttle’s upturned legs. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

“Access would be less difficult if it were upright,” the navigator argued as the engineer ran the subdermal re-gen unit slowly across the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t know how much I trust those seals.” Sulu ran his hand over the warped metal of the ship’s belly. 

“The pressure’s constant,” Chekov assured him before looking back to DelMonde to ask, “Does it say why my nose keeps bleeding?”

The engineer obligingly studied the tiny diagnostic display on the small instrument. “Because you hit your head on the console real hard,” he pretended to read.

“If we’re in any danger of popping those seals,” Sulu was saying. “Flipping this baby is only going to make things worse.”

“I didn’t see any indications that we’d lost internal structural integrity in any critical systems,” the navigator argued.

Sulu frowned as he stood up and experimentally kicked at the leg on which he’d been sitting, “Would you care to offer an opinion, Del?

“On what?” the engineer asked, turning Chekov’s head to one side so he could work on the navigator’s beginning to blacken eye. “Your irrational desire to go camping on an unexplored alien world or his irrational fear that if he’s not surrounded by metal when he sleeps the creepy-crawlies are gonna get him?”

“That’s ridiculous,” his patient protested.

“Oh, is it?”

“I can’t speak to the rationality of Sulu’s preference to make camp outside the vessel, but I am certainly not giving an opinion based on my feelings about…”

“Creepy-crawlies?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” the navigator scoffed. “And I’m certainly not afraid of it.”

“Hell,” Del said, turning Chekov’s head back into the proper position. “You’re afraid of a dog.”

“No, I’m not,” the Russian replied with a little less force than usual.

The engineer said nothing.

“…Although I was badly bitten by one as a child,” Chekov admitted.

“It was a poodle,” Del informed Sulu.

“Poodles,” the Russian rebutted, “can be quite large… and vicious.”

His companions graciously refrained from commenting.

“Okay,” Sulu said, boosting himself up onto the shuttle’s hull. “So we make camp in the grove.”

“But…” Chekov protested.

“Sorry, pal,” the helmsman replied. “But a commander’s irrational desires always trump the crew’s irrational fears.”

***

Despite the number, variety, and severity of malfunctions aboard the experimental craft, by that evening all three officers were in complete agreement about the one that they were each going to mention most prominently in their reports. The primary source of their collective displeasure with the vehicle and its designers was that the emergency supplies had been stowed in a compartment next to the coolant tanks. Although the damage control system had almost immediately sealed the container that was ruptured during the crash, fluids had sprayed the storage compartment contaminating or dissolving most of the emergency rations and melting a latticework of holes in the collapsible shelter.

“Junk,” Del pronounced taking the solar cell Sulu had just carefully cleaned out of the tester and tossing it into a depressingly full bin.

“How many good ones?” Chekov asked, handing him another.

“Five,” the engineer replied putting the cell into the tester. “No, six….” He then sighed as the readings faded. “Nope, five.”

Instead of returning to wiping solar cells with the shreds of the two tunics he’d bled on, Chekov picked up a nearby stick and poked at their campfire. “If only we had a Briggs surge collector…”

“What you want one of those for?” Del asked, tossing yet another coolant-corroded cell into the bin.

“Then we could power the food processor.”

“If you’re gonna wish,” the Cajun said, laying aside the tester and stretching. “Why not just go ahead and wish for some good food?”

"Or that we'd landed on an inhabited class M planet with plenty of restaurants?" Sulu suggested, putting down his cell and cloth too.

“Better hope you remembered to wish for a big pile of native currency,” Del said, taking out the flask of bourbon that he’d managed to coax out of the shuttle’s food processor as a “test” before the unit completely died. “I ain’t eatin’ at no cheap place.”

Chekov used the gold-braided sleeve of a tunic to carefully lift the pot of coffee they’d been heating off the fire. "If I wished us onto an inhabited planet, I’m sure Noel could make more than enough money for us working as a fortune teller."

"And if I had my guitar, we could set T-Paul up on a street corner and he could tap dance for credits."

Although the two tossed these comments off casually, they had the smell of long-running insults. The fortune-telling one Sulu could figure out, but the other... "Tap dance?"

Chekov got an "oh, no" look in his eyes that was in direct proportion to the amount of "oh, goodie" look that came into his roommate's.

"He don't know, do he?" DelMonde said delightedly.

"There’s nothing to know," the Russian said, shrugging the issue off.

"You tap dance?" Sulu repeated.

Del grinned at his roommate. "Except that."

“In most Russian schools, they teach dance.”

The engineer nodded. “Not tap dancing, though.”

Sulu paused, but had to ask again. “You tap dance?”

Chekov sighed in defeat. “I took lessons – very briefly – when I was very young.”

“And was just as cute as a button,” the engineer assured the helmsman.

“How do you know these things about him?”

“Noel likes to use his so-called “mental powers” to…” Chekov began accusingly.

DelMonde smiled like a cat. “His mama told me.”

“You’ve met his mother?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Unfortunately.” Chekov scowled. “At the Academy, one afternoon, I forgot she was coming to visit.” An expression of pain crossed the navigator’s face. “They talked for almost two hours.”

Sulu winced in sympathy. Two hours with even a non-telepath was plenty time to arm a roommate with blackmail material for a lifetime. 

The Cajun nodded. “She’s hot.”

“Don’t speak of my mother that way,” the Russian growled.

“Why you upset for? All I say is that she’s a fine looking woman for her age.”

“Well…” Chekov began grudgingly.

“I not say anything about her being hot for me.” Del turned to Sulu and mouthed “...which she was.”

The navigator pointed an accusing finger at the engineer as he informed the helmsman. “Can you believe that he tried to pick up my mother?”

DelMonde raised an eyebrow. “Did she tell you that?”

“No, but I knew you had when she said you were charming and polite.”

“Well, I ain’t saying nothing,” Del said with exaggerated gentlemanly decorum…. Which didn’t prevent him from adding a moment later, “But if your papa should pass or do your mama wrong…”

“Don’t you dare…” Chekov warned.

“I ain’t said nothin’,” Del protested, but then couldn’t resist adding. “But if I do end up as your stepdaddy, I promise we gonna work on the attitude of yours…”

“Guys,” Sulu interrupted. “We’ve still not come up with anything to do about food for tomorrow.”

“Well, now, didn’t I see us almost crash into a lake on our way down?” the engineer asked.

“Yeah. It’s about a mile to our west.”

“Then we can fish, _non_?”

Sulu looked to Chekov, who nodded. “Readings indicate a respectable number of aquatic lifeforms that should prove edible. I would wish to scan for toxins before we ate anything though.”

“Sure. You can come wit’ me. You been fishing before, ain’t you?”

The navigator shrugged. "In a manner of speaking."

Sulu blinked. "Pavel, how can the answer to that question possibly be ‘In a manner of speaking’?"

"When I was a child, my parents and I lived near a....” The navigator paused and frowned when the right word didn’t come to him. “What's is that you Americans call a very small lake?"

"A pond?" Sulu guessed.

"Yes," the navigator acknowledged. "And I had a small one person sailing craft… which is what I suppose you would call a..."

"A rich kid's toy," Del drawled contemptuously.

"At any rate," Chekov continued to the helmsman. "I developed an interest in the sport, obtained the appropriate equipment and researched the proper technique, however..."

"No fish?" Sulu said, interpreting the Russian’s shrug.

"No fish," his friend confirmed.

Del snorted. "Like a fuckin' computer can teach you to fuckin' fish..."

"I am sure that the tutorial was perfectly sound," Chekov rebutted, "it was simply that..."

"There were no fish in the pond," Sulu concluded when the navigator let the sentence trail off. "It was just a man-made, decorative thing?"

"Yes," the Russian admitted. "I suppose."

"Must have gotten...oh, two or three feet deep, I bet," Del speculated unkindly.

"As much as five," the navigator rebutted defensively. "In spots."

The Cajun rolled his eyes. "Sweet Jesus."

"There were quite a few frogs," Chekov asserted as if that strengthened his case.

"Catch many?" Del asked with acid amusement.

"Not by fishing," the Russian replied stiffly.

“You know what your problem is?” the engineer asked seriously, leaning forward. “You just haven’t had any good role models. You need a strong father figure in your life _, mon fils_.”

“Stop calling me that. I’m not your son.”

“And never will be,” DelMonde confirmed.

The Russian gave a grunt of agreement.

“Biologically,” the Cajun added.

Chekov gave a long-suffering groan as he rose. “I think I should go to sleep while I still have a last name I’m not ashamed of.”

“Like I’d adopt you,” the engineer scoffed, as the navigator selected a stick with some cloth wrapped around it. “Although, I suppose your mother would insist… And it would be less confusing for all your little brothers and sisters.”

Sulu was afraid for a moment that the navigator planned to use the stick to brain DelMonde. Instead the Russian just rolled his eyes and lit the wrapped end of the makeshift torch on fire.

“Sure you don’t want to sleep in the tent?” Sulu offered. Despite the holes, the helmsman had insisted on putting up the collapsible environmental shelter.

“Sulu,” the Russian replied, shaking his head as he looked at the ragged fabric hanging from a precariously leaning frame. “I’m not even sure that it _is_ a tent.”

“Sleep tight, _mon petit brave_ ,” Del wished the departing navigator. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite…’specially since they have three inch fangs and can suck out your colon.”

Chekov snorted as he held his torch aloft. “You are the one who should be worried about the… creeping crawler creatures.”

“Me?” Del shrugged. “I ain’t scared o’ nothin’.”

The navigator looked at him for a moment calculatingly. “Oh, yes, you are,” he asserted, then departed without further comment.

“What was that about?” Sulu asked, when the Russian’s makeshift torch disappeared from view.

“I dunno,” the engineer said, leaning back and taking a long pull from his flask. “But no man ever won any money bettin’ on what his roommate didn’t know about him.”

Sulu made a noise of agreement as he looked back at the emergency shelter. “You’re going to sleep in the tent, aren’t you?”

“You need to face the facts, _mon ami_ ,” Del said, very seriously. “That there is not so much a tent as it is a collection of rags waitin’ to fall on somebody.”

The helmsman sighed as he rose to retrieve the bedrolls. “You know, I don't think I've ever been alone with just the two of you.”

“Really?” The Cajun nudged one of the logs on the fire into a better position with his foot. “Then we'll have to plan more of these little crash landings.”

As Sulu re-emerged from the dilapidated shelter he commented, “I didn't know the two of you were so...”

“So what?”

“Well...” The helmsman paused with Del’s bedroll in his hand, not quite able to verbalize what he was thinking. “You talk to him.”

The engineer scowled. “What am I, a mute?”

“I did know you for around three months before I found out you could put together sentences that didn't begin with "fuck" and end shortly thereafter with "off," Sulu pointed out as he tossed his friend the roll of bedding.

Del made a dismissive noise as he caught the roll.

"But you talk to Chekov."

"Sometimes I can't avoid it.”.

"It's more than that though,” Again Sulu was stuck for a way to capture the roommates’ odd relationship in words. “You two seem to have jokes, running insults... You sort of have... banter.”

The engineer shrugged. “When you live in a little metal closet with someone, you get to know them.”

“It's almost like you like him, Del.”

The Cajun narrowed his eyes. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know.” It was Sulu’s turn to shrug. “You just normally don't like people.”

DelMonde stared at him for a moment before saying, “You're a possessive bastard. You know that, doncha?”

The helmsman blinked. “What's that mean?”

“I don't know” Del imitated him. “It depends on whether or not I'm the only one who's not supposed to have any other friends, or if he is too.”

Sulu decided this was dangerous territory to explore. "So you _do_ think of him as a friend?" he re-directed.

"All right.” The engineer sighed as set his bedding aside. “Since you're obviously not gonna let this go and are determined to pester me until I admit something to that effect, I’ll tell ya the extent to which I do like him. When we were at the Academy, I found – to my everlasting surprise – that when one was able to put up with the agony and inconvenience of going to a bar to get drunk and getting laid, Pavel Chekov was the perfect companion.”

Sulu blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Del took Sulu’s cup, dumped out the remaining coffee and poured in a little bourbon from his flask. “Well, being Russian, the lad has, from birth, been drinking at a semi-professional level and can do so for hours on end without feeling the need to engage in odious amateurish habits such as talking...”

“...Or even taking deep breaths in between drinks,” Sulu agreed, gratefully accepting the bourbon. “Yeah, I’ve seen that and can see how that might appeal to you…. But about the getting laid part…?”

“Oh, yeah,” The engineer assured him. “He was my hunting dog, my retriever.”

The helmsman shook his head. “That I can’t picture.”

“Son, it was a beautiful thing to behold,” Del said, converting the bedroll into a backrest. “We’d set up at table in the corner of a bar and if a couple of likely lasses sashayed in before he got too shitfaced to stand up – which was a race some times -- I’d say, ‘Them two are for us. Go get ‘em, boy.’”

“And he actually would?”

“Well, you know, it’s him, so it would be like…” The Cajun assumed a surprisingly Chekovian mean. “Scowl. Roll them eyes. Noise of disbelief in my arcane powers. Shake that head. Noise of contempt for scandalous uses to which I put my said powers that he don’t believe in in the first place. Finish his drink as if he’s not going to go. But in the end, if both them gals is pretty, he trots his young ass up to the bar.”

That Sulu could picture.

“I have to admit,” Del said, raising his flask to his lips, “his approach was perfect. Dead drunk or stone sober, he never got cocky, never got cute, never tried to mix it up just to see what would happen. Every time it would be – Put himself next to them girls at the bar. Look down and take a deep breath as if he’s never before been so forward in his life. Little side glance. Shy smile. Look down at the bar again. Bite the lip. Another deep breath. Another little side glance. Bump it up to the cute smile. Then, “Good evening, ladies.” And you know he’s got that funny accent and all them girls eat that up. Then, gesture to me, and, ‘May ve buy you a drink?’”

The impression was simultaneously so accurate and so unlikely to be coming from Del, Sulu had to laugh.

“Now that was the only place where he’d occasionally mess up,” the engineer remembered. “If he said, ‘May _I_ buy you a drink?’ he’d blow the whole thing. But I was able to train him out of that pretty quick.”

“You were able to _train_ him?”

“Well, I’d have to buy the first round of drinks so as to remind him that he and I were partners in this venture. But he ain’t dumb, you know. He can tell what works and what don’t.”

Sulu had to laugh again. “And that worked?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. A little amiable chatter until the drinks came then a good, ‘Vould you care to join us?” and that was all she wrote, son. The rest of the evening was a foregone fucking conclusion. Sometimes I wouldn’t even need to talk to ‘em except to stand up when I was ready to go and say, ‘Okay, girlie, it’s you and me. Let’s hit it.’”

“That’s romantic.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly looking for true love in them days,” Del said, taking the bedroll from behind his back and untying it. “And to tell the truth, sometimes the girls were almost beside the point. Going out to the bar with him was like hunting with a good dog. I don’t think I even bothered sleeping with half them gals we pulled.”

“And did he?”

“Who knows? After I left, he was on his own.”

For a few moments there was no sound other the crackle of the fire as the engineer spread out his blankets.

“Del,” Sulu finally had to ask, “did you really come on to Chekov’s mom?”

“Lieutenant Commander Sulu,” the engineer replied reprovingly, “Do you actually think that a sophisticated, mature, proper, Russian, very, very married lady like Mrs. Chekov would even consider doing anything other than chatting pleasantly with a boy almost _exactly_ young enough to be her son?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” the helmsman began apologetically.

Del held up a warning finger. “Because that kind of talk about my future wife ain’t gonna get you no invite to the wedding from either me or my stepson.”

*** ** **

The next morning when Del went back to the shuttle to see if he could persuade the re-gen unit into giving him something he could use for a hook or line, Chekov was already up. The Russian had the ship’s navigational beacon in five different piles that looked like they had no hope of ever fitting them back together.

“You could simply stun the fish with a phaser and gather them in a net,” the navigator said in the sort of sullen tone that usually meant he wanted help but was too proud to ask.

“Why the hell would I wanna do that?” Del asked, loading the tackle he’d been able to make into his newly minted bucket.

“It would be faster and more efficient,” Chekov replied with Vulcan-y diffidence.

The Cajun shook his head. “You don't have any fun, do you?”

“Only when you're not present,” the Russian said sourly, then seeing that his roommate was on the verge of leaving, he tried. “I am surprised that you are not even going to attempt to replace the relay assemblies on this unit.”

“After yesterday, I wash my hands of this piece of shit.”

“I would think,” the navigator began, in a broad stab at reverse psychology, “that your professional...”

“Listen, T-Paul.” Del reached down, took the tool out of Chekov's hands, and turned it around. "I don't take kindly to having my professionalism questioned the first thing in the morning by someone who doesn't even know which end of a adinotronic probe to hold."

“I know how to hold it,” the Russian rebutted indignantly before admitting. "I was using it as a very small hammer." 

DelMonde shouldered his poles. "Good luck with that."

"Noel, wait." The Russian rummaged around through his scattered gear and then held out a tricorder to the engineer. "I’ve set it to give appropriate perimeter alerts for each of the seventeen predator types we’ve scanned in the area… Try not to be eaten."

"Oh?” The Cajun smiled as he put down his fishing paraphernalia so he could sling the tricorder over his shoulder. “Wassa matter, T-Paul? You not wanna break in a new roommate?"

“That would not be nearly as bad as all the paperwork I would have to file if you suddenly became fish rather than fisherman,” the Russian replied. 

“Yeah,” Del conceded, as he re-shouldered his poles. “But think of all those thank you cards you'd get...”

*** ** ***

“Where’s Del?”

Chekov was still puzzling over the navigational beacon more than an hour later when Sulu finally got up. “He went to the lake some time ago.”

Sulu yawned. “What’s this? A jigsaw puzzle?”

“It _was_ the navigational beacon.” The Russian sighed dejectedly. “I was attempting to repair it, but…”

“Well, look at it this way, Pavel,” Sulu consoled, handing him a cup of coffee still warm from the embers of last night’s fire. “You can’t break something that didn’t work in the first place.”

The Russian nodded. “That is a good point.”

The helmsman watched his friend work in silence for a few moments, enjoying the cool, fresh breeze and the sheer pleasure of being outdoors in the morning. “Shouldn’t that go there?” he suggested. 

“One would assume so.” Chekov picked up the two indicated pieces and tried to interlock them. “But, as you see…”

“Let me see that.” Sulu put down his mug.

“I do not think that I am missing a piece either,” the navigator said, trying to bring his fellow officer up-to-date on his lack of progress. “It should connect.”

The helmsman frowned at the two mechanisms. “Maybe there’s an adaptor.”

“I haven’t found one…”

“I wonder if we could make one?”

“Perhaps.” Chekov reclaimed one of the components and began to turn it over in his hand.

Seeing that this was exactly the way the Russian had been drawn into obsessing over this non-functional piece of equipment, Sulu handed the other half back as well. He picked up his coffee again and watched the navigator try different pieces in the oddly shaped sockets of the two components. The helmsman’s mind began to drift towards the story Del had told last night. Instead of coming up with brilliant solutions to Chekov’s engineering problem, his brain kept creating pictures of the Russian out at a bar, obediently bringing girls to the Cajun like a well-trained hunting dog. Finally curiosity finally got the better of Sulu. “Del says that you used to go drinking with him.”

“At the Academy?” Chekov rummaged through a pile of metal tubes with short prongs on his left. “He was my roommate. It would have been rude not to.”

Sulu took another sip of coffee. “He says the two of you used to pick up girls.”

The navigator looked up. “Upon occasion,” he admitted guardedly. “Why? Did he tell some story about me last night?”

“Are there stories about you?” the helmsman asked innocently.

The Russian sighed. “Much has been made of the fact that I dated more than one woman with whom Noel had broke off relations…” The navigator cleared his throat guiltily. “…Almost _immediately_ after he had broken off relations, in fact. But it’s all exaggeration. You should know how these rumors and silly nicknames get out of hand.”

“The Collector” nodded with rueful sympathy.

“It was all a long time ago now.” Chekov picked up tube with a slotted end. “And I was still very young at the time.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Sulu took another sip of his coffee.

After a moment, the navigator turned back to him. “He didn’t tell you the story about the clothes, did he?” the Russian asked, making a visible effort not to appear anxious.

“Clothes?”

The navigator’s cheeks grew a little pink. “About the wrong clothes?”

“No,” Sulu replied slowly, his curiosity piqued.

“Good,” Chekov replied a little too quickly. “It was not very interesting, really. I’m glad he’s forgotten about it.”

This item immediately moved to the head of Sulu’s “Things to Ask Del” list. “He said you were really good at picking up girls.”

“Did he?”

“That surprises you?”

“At the time,” Chekov informed him as he tried to force the two tubes in his hand together, “I believe he was more in the habit of saying I was a ‘fucking moron’.”

Sulu shrugged. “That sounds something he’d say.”

“He said that my idiocy was such a burden on him and everyone around us that I literally constituted a drag on the planet's rotation.”

The helmsman nodded. “He says things like that.”

“And that the only reason I would ever be graduated from the Academy would be in hopes that sending me to space would make days go by a little faster.”

Instead of commenting, Sulu picked up a coil that had been lying behind the navigator’s foot and fitted it into one of the slotted tubes. 

“He kept a chart above his desk in our cabin which displayed calculations he'd made of the exact amount of drag I constituted on the planet,” Chekov reported, taking this combination from the helmsman and fitting it into one of the pronged tubes.

Sulu tried not to smile. “Oh, he did, did he?”

“Updated periodically to reflect the increased burden of what he considered to be any instances of outstanding idiocy on my part.”

“Well, you know what you should have done? You should have just done a chart on him.”

Chekov suddenly needed to look at a component very far away from the helmsman. “That would have been childish, though,” he said. “Wouldn’t it?”

Sulu couldn’t help but notice that the Russian hadn't said ‘no.’ "What was yours?"

The navigator shrugged. "It didn't stay up long," he temporized.

"Chekov..."

The navigator took in a deep breath before confessing, "I did a statistical analysis predicting the likelihood of Noel having sexual relations with some of our less attractive instructors...”

Sulu raised both eyebrows. “Oh?”

“... And several varieties of domesticated animals...” the Russian continued. “…And a few non-bipedal alien lifeforms.” 

The helmsman couldn’t help laughing. “And I bet it was updated too.”

“Of course,” Chekov said, as if they were talking about a report he’d prepared for Mr. Spock. “Depending on information added to my data set concerning the demonstrated proclivities of the subjects.”

“Of course,” Sulu agreed. “Sounds like you had to put some work into it.”

“I was taking a xenobiology course,” Chekov explained. “I almost considered turning it in as my final project.” 

“Del made you take it down, though?”

“Indirectly.” The Russian put aside the components he was working with and picked up a solar cell to test. “I found out that Noel had invited one of my instructors in Hydrometrics over for a drink…thankfully before it happened.”

“And she was on the list?” Sulu guessed.

Chekov nodded. “The chart was rank-ordered in ascending order of likelihood.”

“And she ranked…?”

“Somewhere between pigs, sheep, and Denebian slime Devils.”

Sulu whistled. “That would have been awkward to explain.”

“And worse still if he actually slept with her,” the Russian added.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes,” the navigator agreed seriously. “The data set would have been hopelessly skewed.”

*** ** ***

Sulu wondered if Del could hear his approach in his head before he could hear it with his ears. 

“Shhhh,” the engineer cautioned without turning around as the helmsman came into range. “Don’t scare the fish.”

“Sorry,” Sulu said quietly.

DelMonde had found a pretty spot to put out his lines. He’d chosen a rock that projected several feet out beyond the rest of the shoreline, but was still close enough in to be shaded.

“Catching anything?”

“I’m doing fair to middling.”

The bucket was teaming with unfamiliar aquatic lifeforms that looked vaguely fish-y.

“Think we’re going to be able to eat any of this?” Sulu asked.

“We should be.”

Sulu picked up the tricorder the engineer had propped up against a small rock and did a quick read on the contents of the bucket. “They look pretty good, but….” The helmsman’s attention was drawn to a strong reading from the lake beyond him. “Del…there’s something out there.”

“Shhh,” the Cajun cautioned calmly. “You mean the old gentleman napping at the bottom of this pond?”

Sulu shook his head at the readings. “It’s big.”

“I know.”

“I mean, dinosaur big.”

“He ain’t gonna bother us if we don’t bother him,” Del assured him. Then indicated the extra equipment lying nearby. “You gonna fish?”

Sulu shook his head again, as he carefully replaced the tricorder. “I’m probably not much better than Chekov would be.”

“Well, I can show you which end of the pole to grab,” Del drawled.

The statement had a surprisingly sexual overtone to it. DelMonde looked away as if he were a little surprised by it too. ‘He responds to need,’ Sulu thought. ‘After just one night away from Jilla, do I need enough to be noticed?’ Aloud he explained, “I’m just here to get some water. Chekov found enough solar cells to get the water purifier going.” 

“I bet he’s proud of himself.”

“Yeah.” Sulu sat down on the edge of the rock near Del… but not too near. The view was wonderful. A dark blue lake surrounded by primeval forest rippled gently. From beyond the lake came the sound of a waterfall as the water spilled into a deep river beyond their sight. “He’s really disappointed that you aren’t helping him fix that navigational beacon.”

“He’ll live,” Del commented unrepentantly. “‘Sides, he’s never going to amount to anything if his mother and I don’t stop sheltering him.”

Sulu smiled at this unexpected continuation of Del’s “stepdaddy” joke. “It’s nice to see you in a good mood for a change.”

“Wanna know a secret?” Del said, pulling on his line a little to clear it of a piece of wood that was drifting by. “It’s not my mood. It’s just that it’s this much easier on me to be away from people.”

“Really?” The thought occurred to Sulu that being in a profession that required you to be sardined in with 427 other people all the time was probably a poor career choice for someone who needed this much solitude to be comfortable.

“Well, what the hell am I gonna do?” Del asked, responding to his unspoken comment. “Go off some place by myself, fish and drink bourbon the rest of my life? …Although, that is actually sort of what my daddy and most of my uncles do for a living…”

Sulu looked around, his thoughts turning once more to the one thing this place was missing. “It would get pretty lonely.”

“Yeah. After a week, I’d probably have a couple of mermaid girlfriends breaking my heart on the regular,” Del said, then gave him a sideways look. “Speaking of, you could calm down.”

“What?”

“Jilla, Jilla, Jilla, Jilla…”

“Oh, sorry.” He tried to stop thinking about her, but failed miserably. “I miss her.”

“Well, miss her then, but stop worrying. Nothing’s going on but you’re all worried because you think she’s worried.”

“I know she is.”

“Yeah, she’s probably worried that you’re worried that she’s worried,” Del concluded unsympathetically. “See, ya’ll are in what they call a dysfunctional emotional feedback loop even though you’re light years apart.”

Sulu shrugged and smiled. “I thought they called that being in love.”

“Dysfunctional emotional feedback loop is just the clinical term for love…” Del’s face suddenly went blank, then contracted a little as if he were in pain. “Uhhhh…”

Sulu tensed. “What is it?

Del’s hand on his leg stopped him from rising. “I think we’re about to see something,” the engineer said, quickly drawing in his line. “You need to keep real still, all right? Don’t go for your phaser unless I say something.”

“Okay,” Sulu agreed warily.

At first there was no sign that anything was out of the ordinary. He helped Del gather his equipment and move to the bank. When they were at what the engineer seemed to think was a safe distance, Del tapped Sulu on the back and pointed. An expanding circle of waves was beginning to form on the lake’s surface on the side far from them. As turbulence began to steadily increase, Sulu thought he could feel a thrumming sensation inside his head. Unseen birds screeched as the rolling and bubbling of the water intensified. The thrumming in his head grew louder until it blended in with the sound of something huge coming out of the water. 

The giant nose of something gray and scaly broke the surface of the lake in a huge fountain of spray. As it dove back under, the creature’s barnacled back continued to make a huge, lumpy peak above the surface…. And continued… and continued… and continued. Del’s “old gentleman” had woken up from his nap.

The sheer size of the creature took Sulu’s breath away.

“He’s gearing up…” Del said, barely audible over the roar of displaced water and the distress of the waterfowls.

The helmsman was about to ask for what when the head of the creature exploded again from below the surface of the lake. The massive beast sprang up, up, up, into an impossibly high arch as it leapt over the edge of the waterfall and curved down towards the river below where it landed with another echoing crash of water and squeals of alarmed wildlife.

“Wow,” Sulu breathed, his heart pounding in his chest. He turned to Del. “Wow.”

“See,” Del said, picking up his bucket. “I told you that fishing was interesting.”

****

****

The two of them were not quite halfway back to their camp when DelMonde suddenly stopped walking.

“Del?” Sulu asked, taking him by the shoulder.

The engineer stared sightlessly passed him. “Something…out there.”

“Is it that thing from the lake again?” Sulu said, upholstering his phaser… although he didn’t know how much good it would do against a creature that size.

“No…” Still not focusing on anything, Del lifted his gaze. “Up… very far…Something… different…”

Sulu didn’t know if it were just the strangeness of the Cajun’s tone but he too began to have an eerie feeling – like someone had brushed cold fingertips lightly across the back of his neck. “It’s watching us?”

“Curious…” Del continued in the same hollow tone. “Maybe a scavenger…Looking…” The engineer blinked and suddenly focused on his face. “Sulu, this thing is a predator.”

Without pausing to think about why he was doing so, the helmsman took out his communicator and flipped it open.

“Chekov, here.” The navigator’s voice crackled.

“Chekov, we’re getting…uhm, readings of a flying predator,” he reported.

“Shiny…Looking…Looking…” Del was saying.

There was the sound in the background of Chekov’s tricorder whirring. “Yes, I’m getting readings also. It’s well above us, though. Descending gradually.”

“Shiny…Want… Shiny…”

The hair on the back of Sulu’s neck began to stand up. “Chekov,” he said, trying to stay calm. “Are you close to the shuttle?”

“I’m inside the shuttle.”

“Oh, shit.” Del suddenly seemed to come out the trance. He grabbed Sulu’s communicator and shouted into it. “Run, you son of a bitch, run!”

“What?”

“Don’t argue, Chekov, “ Sulu ordered into the communicator. “Don’t talk. Just get out of there! Now! Right now! As far away from the shuttle as you can run! Right now!”

“Now! Now! NOW!” Del seconded vigorously.

There was the sound of movement and shuttle’s perimeter alerts going off. “ _Boizhe moi_ ,” Sulu thought he heard the Russian say before the line closed off.

The tricorder at Del’s hip began to beep as their proximity warnings were also activated. The engineer pointed above the tree line. “There he is.”

The creature looked like a big bird for first second, but steadily grew larger as it plunged ground-ward in a step dive. It was moving so fast that it was hard to pick out anything other than huge wings, a long neck, and clawed feet. With amazing fluidity, it disappeared below the trees then reappeared clutching the shuttle in its talons.

“Oh, God,” Sulu breathed. The damaged hull of the craft looked even more crunched than it had been before. If the navigator hadn’t gotten out… He desperately pressed the call button on his communicator. “Chekov? Chekov? Chekov, can you hear me?”

The communicator remained silent.

“Del,” Sulu said, not taking his eyes off the device, as if he could will Chekov into being okay. “Can you tell if he’s…?”

DelMonde looked off into the distance with a frown of concentration. “He’s not dead… He’s scared…. He’s real scared…” The engineer fell silent for a moment that went on far too long. “Wondering where his communicator is…”

“Sulu?” The comm. crackled back to life. “I’m here. I dropped my communicator and couldn’t find it for a moment.”

“Chekov!” Sulu released a big sigh of relief, as he started towards the camp at a rapid pace. “Are you okay?”

“I am… undamaged.”

“He’s got another damned nosebleed,” Del continued to report, picking up his gear and following. “No, he just thinks he might, because he had to dive off the top of the shuttle.”

“That creature… it… stole the shuttle.” Chekov said, sounding more than a little dazed.

“No shit,” Del commented.

“Yeah. We saw that,” Sulu confirmed. “We were scared you were still in it.”

“No... no.”

“He almost was,” the engineer reported grimly. “That’s why he had to jump clear of the shuttle. Stubborn bastard had to stay and double check his fucking readings…”

“I couldn’t believe how fast it was descending,” Chekov defended himself. “How did you know that it would go after the shuttle?”

Sulu looked at Del for an acceptable explanation.

“Just say logic,” the Cajun advised softly.

“It seemed like it was a logical target.”

“Yes,” the Russian agreed, as predicted. “I suppose so. It would be an anomalous enough to draw note.”

“And shiny,” Del added. “That thing loves shiny.”

“You believe you were in communication with the creature?” The navigator sounded dubious.

“I believe that your ass was about to become the gooey center of a piece of shuttlecraft candy for that thing.”

There was a pause on the other end, then, “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Sulu asked anxiously, once more increasing his pace as they drew near to being within visual distance of the camp.

“He busted his tricorder,” the engineer supplied, slowing.

“My tricorder is… Noel, I am perfectly capable of reporting my own thoughts, thank you.”

“Yeah?” the Cajun caught up enough so that he could speak into Sulu’s communicator. “Well, you weren’t capable of following a simple command like ‘run’, though, were you, ya dumb fuck?”

“I’m starting to see debris,” Sulu said, noting the glint of metal in the tops of the trees above them.

“I think some of the deck plating fell out the hatch,” Chekov confirmed.

“And almost hit his stupid, empty head,” Del added, as he and Sulu came through a thicket at the edge of the clearing where they had crashed the shuttle. It was now empty except for a line of downed trees, a twin pathway of rutted ground, some glints of metal, and a lone figure in gold and black.

“What are you looking for?” Sulu asked.

“His phaser.”

“My pha… Noel, stop it.”

“Only if I don’t have to hear you whine about your fantasy about how you think that if you hadn’t dropped your phaser, you could have jumped out of the shuttle and shot that thing… which you might could have done if you’d run when we said to.”

Chekov looked up and upon seeing how close his fellow officers were, closed his communicator. Either that, Sulu thought, or he’s overcome with Del’s typical tender concern for his close brush with being lunch for the flying reptile.

“What are we going to do?” the Russian asked as soon as they were close enough to hear him without his having to raise his voice.

“Get the hell out of here,” Del suggested, scanning the skies.

“But the shuttle…”

Sulu picked up a square of decking that had stuck upright in the ground. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it, Pavel. Unlike that big reptile, we can’t fly…”

“And that thing tagged us as mammals,” Del said, picking one of Chekov’s blankets off some underbrush.

“So?”

“For it, thinking ‘Mmmm, mammals’ is like you thinking ‘Mmmm, meatloaf’,” Del explained, bending over to pick up something. It turned out to be the navigator’s phaser. “It’ll be back,” he warned, handing Chekov the weapon.

*Continued*


	2. Chapter 2

“I think you were right,” Sulu informed Del as he set his pack down on the floor of the shallow cave where they had decided to make their new base.

“About what?” the engineer asked irritably as Chekov moved beyond him to scan the dim back of the enclosure.

“About your moods,” Sulu said, breaking out one of their precious solar cells. “This morning, you said that the way you seemed didn’t have anything to do with your mood; you were just more relaxed here because we’re so far from other people.” The helmsman activated the cell, flooding the cave with a pale echo of sunlight. “I think I can see it. You’re in a bad mood now, but are still more relaxed than usual.”

Despite his light tone, the helmsman was actually very ill at ease. The loss of the shuttlecraft concerned him greatly; however, more than that, the feeling of being in contact with the alien creature had left him anxious and unnerved. For some reason it made him feel like he was on the verge of making a terrible mistake.

It had been almost equally disturbing to see Del’s extrasensory perception in action. Sulu had known the Cajun for so long that he come to ignore the fact that he was a telepath. Del didn’t usually do much to draw attention to it. Since not caring what other people thought looked very similar on the outside to not _knowing_ what other people thought, it was easy to forget that he was a Sensitive. Compared to the way Ruth and Jilla reacted to the other people’s concerns, Del seemed more like an Insensitive. Sulu had no doubt that there were people on the _Enterprise_ who had no idea that Del was a telepath at all and simply thought of him as a moody person with a puzzling tendency to blame his chronic migraines on other people. The way the engineer had reached out into the minds of Chekov and the creature had been a rare demonstration of the power, accuracy, and focus of which he was capable.

Thinking back on the incident now, Sulu realized that the navigator’s reaction – or rather, lack of reaction -- was part of what had been puzzling him about the roommates’ odd relationship since they’d arrived. Chekov’s “Stop it, Noel” had been delivered in the same way one might scold a companion for indulging in an annoying habit – like humming or biting his nails. There had been no fear, outrage, or even disbelief – which was perhaps the most surprising given the robust amount of skepticism that the Russian tended to maintain about psychic phenomenon. Did Del read him so often they’d both become used to it? Did he read everyone like that all the time?

Sulu fought the strange sense of panic that always rose up inside him when he felt like people were able to find out too much about him. This planet was starting to make him feel like he had a fine layer of itching powder on his skin. This was a feeling that he somehow had the sense that DelMonde was capable of relieving -- if only the helmsman could figure out a way to get the engineer to talk about psychic sensitivity in the relaxed, casual way he’d done when they were at the lake.

“What the hell you doin’?” Del asked, unslinging the bag from around his shoulder. “Workink on your damned telepathy merit badge? Of course I in a bad mood. I hot. I tired. I thirsty. I hungry. For three miles I been hauling this damn bucket of fish, a broken navigation beacon, and your fuckin’ fucked-up tent.” The engineer let the aforementioned item drop unceremoniously to the ground. “And on top of that, my future stepson here in high danger of being eaten by a dragon later today or court-martialed tomorrow. ‘Course I in a bad mood. Try to fuckin’ focus, will ya?”

“I doubt I will be court-martialed,” Chekov said glumly.

“For lettin’ a giant, flyin’ creepy-crawly make off with that much Starfleet equipment in one swoop?” Del said, looking for a cool spot to store his fish. “Hell, soon as Sulu give the word, I rigging a brig up in the back of this hole just so we can throw you in it.”

The Russian was still crestfallen enough about not getting a shot off at the flying reptile to not be amused.

“You were under orders to drop everything and run.” Sulu reminded him… not for the first time that afternoon. “Not to try to engage the creature.”

Chekov didn’t seem at all cheered as he broke out the water purification unit and began to set it up at the sunny mouth of the cave.

“If you two start up again on how much damage a single phaser could or could not do to a giant flying lizard, I gonna strangle one or both of ya,” Del threatened, dragging Sulu’s tent next to a cave wall and fashioning it into a cushion to sit on.

"It wasn't your fault that thing decided to go after the shuttle," Sulu told the navigator, as he helped him pour water into the unit from the small cooking pot that fortunately had been left next to the fire instead of being stowed in the shuttle.

Although the delay in the navigator's evacuation of the shuttle had grown longer and more inexcusable in Del and Chekov's imaginations with each re-hashing of the event, it had become quite clear to Sulu that the real problem was how far inside the belly of the overturned shuttlecraft the navigator was when he'd gotten their call.

Chekov had taken the deck plating off and crawled into a cramped quarter of the engine accessway hoping to find a way to power the food processor straight from the craft's batteries. When he got their call, he'd been flat on his back, wedged into a space so tight it could barely accommodate the width of his shoulders. He hadn't understood the Cajun's first warning and had thought that it might be directed at Sulu instead of him.

Immediately upon hearing the helmsmands command, though, he hastily secured the power conduit he was working on and began to wriggle out of the accessway as quickly as he could, pausing only to retrieve his phaser from his box of tools.

"And what the fuck was a phaser doing in your toolbox?" the engineer had asked more than once.

When the proximity alarms had gone off, Chekov had, like Lot's wife, turned back for a near-to-fatal second to check that the predator being detected was the flying one Sulu and Del were warning him about, not something equally menacing which had also arrived on the scene and would be waiting outside the shuttle to gobble him up.

The rest of the navigator's escape time was taken up in the awkward task of climbing up the deck of the shuttle to get to the hatch. The helmsman reflected that they could just as validly be obsessing on why they hadn't chosen to flip the shuttle over onto its feet or constructed a ladder to get in and out more quickly.

"No one blames you," Sulu assured the Russian.

“Speak for yourself.” DelMonde sat down heavily and uncapped his flask.

Chekov scowled as drinkable water began to drip into a cup, then turned to ask DelMonde, “Are you going to cook?”

“I guess.”

“Could we have something other than coffee and bourbon tonight?”

“Entirely new menu,” Del assured him. “Bourbon and fish… since you let the creepy-crawly take the coffee.”

An ominous silence suddenly settled over the new inhabitants of the cave.

“We lost the _coffee_?” Sulu looked down at the navigator, frowning.

“I put it in the shuttle,” Chekov explained. “So it wouldn’t get too…”

The Russian withered under his commanding officer’s displeased gaze.

Del gave a resigned sigh and re-capped his flask. “I be getting that brig ready.”

“No, it’s all ri…” Sulu automatically started to dismiss, but was once more struck by the weight of his subordinate’s offence. “You _lost_ the coffee?”

The Russian shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid so.”

“We brought the coffee pot,” Sulu said, bringing that item out of his pack and holding it out accusingly. “Even though the two of you knew that Chekov had lost the coffee.”

“To put water in,” Chekov explained, taking it from him and using it to replace the half-filled cup. “I’m sorry it’s gone. I know you like coffee. Water is better for you, though.”

Only iron discipline, years of friendship, and Starfleet’s strictures against striking a fellow officer prevented the helmsman from giving the navigator another bloody nose.

Had Sulu been two steps further away from dehydration, he might have dashed the cup of purified water Chekov offered to the ground. As it was, he had to content himself with giving the navigator a frown that was intended to clearly communicate that further comments extolling the virtues of non-coffee liquids would not be tolerated. As the Russian, seemingly oblivious to the magnitude of his transgression, held out the tragically misused coffeepot to refill his cup, Sulu let his eyes drop toward the back of the cave to let the navigator know that the construction of a small, uncomfortable, rock brig was still under serious consideration.

“There was not very much of it left at any rate,” Chekov said, glibly tossing off this completely irrelevant observation as he drained a cup of water with a shocking lack of contrition.

“Del…” Sulu smiled slightly as an idea for another suitable punishment came into his mind. “Chekov said you knew some story about his losing his clothes.”

“What?”

The question had an immediate, electrifying effect on the navigator. Getting exactly the sort of deer in headlights look on his face the helmsman had aimed for, Chekov held up a hand begging for clemency. “Sulu, Sulu, no. Please.”

“What story?”

“I think it was something about clothes,” the helmsman persisted mercilessly.

“Clothes?”

“I think I said under no circumstances mention such a story,” the navigator corrected.

The Cajun was still in the dark. “I not know what story you talkin’ about.”

“Something about the _wrong_ clothes,” Sulu remembered.

“Oh.” Del leaned forward. “This by any chance go along with a ‘Much has been made of the fact that in a few instances I happened to...’ preface?”

The helmsman took his cup of water and went to sit down on the tent beside the engineer. “I believe it did.”

“Oh.” Del companionably added some bourbon to Sulu’s water. “Then this the story about how T-Paul and I screwed so many of the same women that one time he came home wearing my clothes.”

“ _Bozhe moi_ ,” the navigator groaned, covering his eyes.

Sulu smiled. This was obviously going to be as good as he hoped it was going to be. “Really?

“You denying it?” the Cajun asked Chekov.

“I object to the way you choose to present the facts,” the Russian retorted.

“All right, then you watch me and speak up if I start to tell it wrong.” The engineer turned to the helmsman with an exaggeratedly earnest look on his face. “Now, Sulu, the first thing you should know is that this a story about unspeakable ingratitude.”

“Is it?” the helmsman responded in kind.

“Shameful, unforgivable ingratitude -- on my part.” Del put a hand over his heart. “Now, you not forget that.”

“I'll try,” Sulu promised as the navigator groaned and added more water to the purification unit.

“There was this ol' gal in San Fran who had a place in the mountains,” Del began. “Real nice, real quiet.”

“The girl?”

“No, the place,” the engineer corrected as if surprised that his friend would make such an error. “Well, I spent a weekend or two with her up there and then later in a following week, she calls me up and says I left a few of my things at her place and could I come get them _right now_ \-- if you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“And I was studying for a test so I say, ‘Woman, I be there when I there.’ And that woulda been all she wrote, but…” Del gestured expansively towards Chekov, who had brought the coffeepot over to re-fill Sulu’s cup. “This prince among men, sensing me on the verge of social disaster...” Since the navigator was now pouring the engineer a cup of water and was close enough to be clapped on the shoulder, the Cajun did so. “This young saint, tossing aside any care for the danger to his own virtue from this obviously desperately horny older woman I had temporarily taken up with, says, ‘Noel, my friend, continue your studies. I vill go get your things from this person’.”

“Wow,” Sulu said, nodding to show how impressed he was.

“I actually did pick up the items for you,” Chekov pointed out as he handed the engineer a cup.

“Yes, you did,” DelMonde said as if he’d been waiting for this response. “And I ain't never said thank you for that, have I?”

“No,” Chekov replied diffidently as he poured himself a cup of water. “You haven’t.”

“And here is the ingratitude I wanted you to look for, Sulu -- the shocking ingratitude that I usually just skip right over like it not an important -- or even very interesting -- part of this story.”

Sulu made a tsk-tsk noise with his tongue.

“It was a simple mistake,” Chekov protested preemptively. “Under similar circumstances, anyone could have done the same.”

“Oh, but so few of us ever get the chance you did,” Del pointed out, before turning back to Sulu. “So, later that day... much, _much_ later that day, this one come running in swearing up a blue streak. He already 10 minutes late for a lab. He cut his trip back so fine he needed to go straight there to be on time, but he not able to do that ‘cause he had somehow gotten a hold of a defective uniform tunic.”

“It wasn't that big,” the navigator muttered, once more in advance of the narrative.

“And lo and behold but the one he got on was all stretched out,” Del continued, heedlessly. “The cuffs were down to here...”

“Not that big.”

“The shirttail be hittin’ him about halfway to his knees and he just could _not_ figure what happen to make it stretch out so. I told him to calm down, he probably just ordered it wrong from the computer…”

“I don't remember you're telling me to calm down,” Chekov muttered. “I think it was more in terms of ‘You probably just fucked up, you fucking moron’.”

“So there he is, mad as a bull, threatening to send in an official complaint on everybody and anybody -- which,” Del turned momentarily back to the navigator. “I so wish to God I not stop you from doing -- when he finally checks the label inside the sleeve.”

“And it's your tunic,” Sulu concluded.

“And it my tunic,” Del confirmed, “which he -- in what some have speculated was an over-sexed haze -- managed to put on and wear halfway back to the Academy ‘fore he even notice.”

“They all look alike,” the navigator insisted.

“So,” the Cajun concluded, holding up his flask to toast his roommate. “That is the story of my shocking ingratitude in response to a favor done for me by this paragon of virtue.”

Sulu shook his head, although he was well-satisfied with the story. “You really ought to thank him, Del.”

“Oh, no. Since the primary point of this story is my ingratitude -- not, mind you, an illustration of what a slut-monger this li’l fellow turn into when he finally got out of his parents' house -- then if I apologize there be no reason for me to ever tell it again... And I tell ya, if this boy ever becomes admiral I be right there at the ceremony telling this story.”

“The tunics were all identical!” the Russian burst out.

“And jus’ how the hell many uniforms were there layin’ on that bedroom floor that day?”

“Well,” the navigator conceded. “Only two of them were from the Academy....”

*******

Thinking of Pavel Chekov as a “friend” or “liking” him were concepts so alien to Noel DelMonde’s way of thinking that after Sulu had suggested the idea, he kept puzzling over it in spare moments.

This seemed to be a suitably spare moment. He and the Russian were sitting on a big flat rock outside their cave working while their food cooked. Sulu was taking a nap inside in preparation for manning the first watch of that night. Del was working on the navigational beacon while Chekov cleaned the fish. Actually, the Russian thought of what he was doing as primarily being the tasks of dissecting, cataloguing, and scanning specimens – but that didn’t matter. The fish were being methodically cleaned, cut up, and dumped into the stew with some roots and herbs the Russian had also “catalogued” and “dissected.”

Del turned the idea of friendship with Chekov over in his mind as if it were as faulty as the device he was working on. The primary problem was not that he disliked the navigator, but that being “friends” with him was utterly and completely unnecessary. More than that, it would probably ruin some of the things he enjoyed about the relationship they had established.

For example, the two of them could sit no more than five feet away from each other -- as they were now -- and be perfectly quiet with each man keeping his own thoughts and his own feelings to himself. In Del’s opinion, there was nothing more civilized and restful. If they were friends, they might be tempted to ruin this peaceful arrangement by doing something stupid… like talking… or having to be concerned about how the other person felt.

And “liking” Chekov would make him a less ideal candidate for the “what if” game…

Because as a child his extra-sensory abilities had seemed less of a gift and more of a horrible disability, Del had from that time played a little "what if?" game with himself. He picked someone normal... or "non-gifted" as he'd been taught to call it -- and compared himself to them. It was always important to him that his life be just as good as if not better than this less burdened person.

At first, his chosen "normal" was his cousin Coleridge. Cole was about nine years older than Del, good-looking and confident. Since he was one of Noel's aunt's boys and had a different last name, Cole had been one of the first ones to call him "Del" instead of "Noel." Fond of nicknames, Cole had with intentional irony called him "Shorty" -- because even as a child, Del had been long-legged and tall -- and non-ironically called him "Devil-boy" because Cole -- like many of Del's relatives -- thought the child was possessed or the victim of a particularly maleficent curse that had probably been directed towards Del's parents.

Like everyone else, the little boy’s violent rages, incoherence, and random voicing of other people’s innermost thoughts spooked Cole. However by the time Del's mother had managed to civilize her wild child to the point that Del could hold a reasonable conversation, Cole had grown into a daredevil adolescent who was enchanted by the fact that he was actually related to someone who was almost inarguably possessed or the victim of some notably bad _gris-gris._

In this albeit odd fashion, Cole was actually rather proud of Del and could be relied upon to slip a little Johnnie Walker Red into the boy's drinks upon request.

With the passing of time, though, keeping up with or even outdoing his older cousin had become less and less of a challenge. Cole had made a series of uninspired life choices and now seemed to have turned all his creative powers on thinking up newer and dumber ways to cheat on whoever his wife was that year.

Just as Cole had begun his descent into the mundane, and life at the Clave had Del convinced that "normal" was a figment of the collective imagination, Pavel Chekov was assigned into his life. Here at last was the perfect comparative marker for the "What would my life be like if I weren't gifted?" game. Chekov was a person of similar goals with a similar level of intelligence who was the very definition of non-gifted.

The little Russian was even better suited as an exemplar of the "normal" life than was Del's friend Jeremy Paget, who, although technically not a sensitive, was almost too intuitive and empathetic to count as not being gifted. Del ruefully recalled that he had thought Jer's near obsession with Kamikaze also disqualified him as a suitable parallel. "Love could never lay me so low," the Cajun remembered thinking.

Failure, he had found, was an important part of the “what if” game too. Jer and Cole’s major and minor defeats had in the end made the Cajun sad, thus ruining any real sense of triumph he might have derived from competing with them. With Chekov, though, it was entirely different. Not only was Del less emotionally attached to the navigator, Chekov had an uncanny way of bouncing back from misfortune that made his failures very palatable. The Russian was like a little rubber ball. The engineer could watch his roommate’s life as if it were an episode of the “Perils of Pauline” – more in terms of “How he gonna get out of this?” than in sympathy. Chekov had a knack for scrambling out from under the unkind fingers of fate just like he’d dove out from under the dragon’s claws before it hit the shuttle. A much more true and useful gift, in the Cajun’s opinion, than damned telepathy.

So from the Academy onward, Del had begun to silently keep a running tally of his and his roommate’s successes and failures, triumphs and defeats -- not only in a competitive way -- but as a continuing test of his mother's oft-repeated dictum that if he learned to control himself, he could live just as good and happy a life as anyone.

Of course, he knew that there were several who would question that he’d ever learned to control – or behave himself…

“You do this?” Del asked aloud, holding up an amateurishly joined conglomerate of parts.

Chekov bit his lip as he looked up from slicing through fish guts. “Is it ruined?”

“ _How_ you do this?” the engineer rephrased unsmilingly.

“I disassembled one of the corroded solar cells, wrapped the parts in the conductive meshing from the cell…” Chekov paused before confessing. “…and then fused them with my phaser.”

The Cajun narrowed his eyes as he shook the part warningly. “If I _ever_ catch you doin’ anything like this on any vessel I work on, I swear to God I gonna tape your fingers together and weld ‘em to a bulkhead. You understand me?”

Chekov gave a long sigh that was equal parts sullen and guilty.

“But…” DelMonde inserted the component inside the beacon’s casing, closed the hatch, and pressed a button.

The Russian’s grin went from ear to ear as the device blinked into life. “It works!”

Del mussed the navigator’s hair in congratulations. “I make an engineer of you yet, _mon fils_. That is, if you not blow us both up first.”

*******

Sulu frowned into the cup. “It doesn’t look like coffee.”

“It’s not really coffee,” Chekov admitted. “Just a temporary substitute.”

“It too thin to be coffee,” Del observed critically.

It was just after sunset. The three of them had made a second campfire on the plateau above the roof of their cave, agreeing that it would give the person keeping watch a better view of the entire surrounding area.

With tricorders, having a 360 degree view wasn’t that critical, but it had a certain psychological value and was inarguably more scenic. Their cave sat tucked away on a natural terrace in the south face of the small, flat-topped hill. To their right stretched out the valley where they’d landed. To their left was the lake. Around them were the rocky tops of other hills. Visible from this height were the peaks of the mountains to the north where the tricorders told them that flying dragon like the one who had stolen their shuttle lived.

Sulu sniffed his cup disdainfully. “It doesn’t smell like coffee.”

“It’s more like a tea, I suppose,” Chekov said, refilling his own cup.

DelMonde took a sip and promptly spit it out. “Only if ‘tea’ is Russian for ‘swill’.”

The Russian turned back to the only person he had ever had any hope this brew might placate. “It contains a high concentration of the native equivalent of caffeine.”

“It tastes like tree bark,” the engineer complained.

“It _is_ tree bark,” his companions informed him in unison.

“It can be prepared differently if the texture is unacceptable,” Chekov offered.

Sulu favored the Russian the sort of look that in ancient days would have warned a retainer that it was getting perilously close to the time to sharpen his swords and start work on a death poem. “It’s drinkable,” he pronounced parsimoniously. “It’s just not coffee.”

The navigator sighed deeply. “I should go to bed so I can get an early start tomorrow.”

“On what?”

“Hunting down the dragon so I can retrieve our supplies,” he replied in mock earnest.

“We’ve decided that’s too dangerous,” Sulu said crossly, not realizing that the navigator was joking.

“It’s less frightening than the prospect of you without coffee.”

“Oh, yeah, I with you,” Del seconded. “’Sides, I running out of bourbon.”

“I imagine so.” The navigator stacked his empty bowl on top the engineer’s. “Our fish and bourbon was more bourbon than fish.”

The Cajun shrugged almost apologetically. “I had do something t’ kill the taste.”

Chekov shook his head. “And you had always told me that a good Acadian cook could prepare an old boot in dirty dishwater and make it taste better than filet mignon.”

“An ol' boot and dirty dishwater have better flavor than the roots and grass clippings you found for us to eat,” Del replied, collecting Sulu’s plate and handing it to his roommate.

“Oh, so it was my ingredients that ruined the taste?”

“They sure not add anything.”

“I was certain that, as usual, you would point out some way that it was my fault,” the navigator said, putting the bowls in a bucket of water to soak. “I’m actually relieved. For a moment, I thought that perhaps Russian taste buds weren’t highly enough developed to appreciate fine American cuisine.”

“Don’t get sassy, boy,” Del warned, tossing his utensils into the bucket one at the time. “Remember, I know all your secrets.”

Chekov snorted dubiously. “Do I have any left?”

“We not scraping the bottom of the barrel yet.”

“At least I _have_ secrets,” the Russian retorted. “Since you make no effort to conceal your bad behavior, everyone knows yours.”

Sulu felt sufficiently revived by the navigator’s bark tea to smile and say, “There is that, Del.”

The engineer crossed his arms and frowned. “I think it past your bedtime, _non_?”

Chekov rose, picking the bucket up by the handle. “You aren’t coming?”

Del looked down in the direction of the cave mouth and made a face. “I not know how much sleep I be getting in that spider-y looking hole.”

The navigator finished his tea off in a single swallow before consigning that cup to the bucket too. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

A few steps down the path through the standing rocks that led down to the cave’s mouth, a thought seemed to hit the Russian. He turned back. “I wasn't a… a… a slut-monger.”

Del rolled his eyes. “Oh, I knew this comin’.”

“It's completely ridiculous,” the navigator argued belatedly. “It isn't even a word.”

The engineer raised his flask to his lips. “There not a word for what you were, son. I had to improvise.”

“But compared to you...”

“Compare to me,” the Cajun granted, “you were -- and are -- a nun raised in a convent.”

“Then why make such a...”

“’Cause you take it so seriously. That always your problem...”

“And what makes it funny,” Sulu said, feeling good enough to be a little apologetic.

“Sweet Mary, even when you _did_ have a one night stand, it a very _serious_ one night stand... with flowers and a thank you card afterwards.”

The Russian frowned. “I never sent a thank you card.”

Sulu knew that this meant he had sent flowers at least once.

“You not do drugs,” Del began, enumerating the Russian’s lack of vices on his fingers. “You not do smoke. You not do guys. You not do ménages. You not do groups. You not do kink -- which, hell, I think covers 90% of everything outside missionary position for you… If I not know you like to drink like a fish and screw like a dog in heat, I’d’a sworn I was rooming with a candidate for the priesthood.”

“One does hear some pretty wild stories about Russian priests...” When Sulu got an evil look from Chekov, he added, "Although Rasputin can hardly be considered typical of Russian clergy."

“If not for your uncanny willingness,” Del continued, “and some even said _eagerness_ \-- to offer not only emotional comfort but sexual solace to women whose desires I had somehow frustrated...”

“What Noel refuses to acknowledge,” Chekov interrupted, turning to Sulu to plead his case, “is that he had a habit of leaving in me some awkward positions...”

“Which, for him, is anything other’n missionary…” the engineer put in.

“In our cabin -- more than once -- there would be a naked woman lying on my bunk sobbing. What was I to do?” the Russian demanded rhetorically. “In my place what would you have done?”

Del and Sulu shared a look before answering in unison. "Called a shuttlecab for her."

“Oh.” Chekov rolled his eyes with exaggerated innocence. "Now they tell me..."

***

A long period of comfortable silence lapsed before the two officers actually turned to the subject of the navigator.

“You can read Chekov pretty well, can’t you?” Sulu asked, deciding to sound Del out again on the subject of telepathy.

The engineer was laying with his hands folded behind his head looking up at the stars.

“He not think very complicated things,” Del replied easily.

“That's not exactly what I'm asking,” the helmsman pressed.

The Cajun turned his head enough to give Sulu the sort of impatient look he had before, but answered, “Well, yeah, I can read him like a book.”

“Can you read everyone like that?”

Del returned his gaze to the stars. “He not have shields,” he replied indirectly.

“Someone with more shields is more difficult?” Sulu wasn’t quite sure he wanted this confirmed.

The engineer nodded.

“But not impossible?”

Del shrugged.

There was definitely something about this planet and the creatures that they had encountered that was making Sulu feel odd. More information about telepathy from a telepath seemed like it couldn’t fail to relieve the anxious feeling inside his chest. “You knew what he was thinking before he did,” the helmsman stated almost as an accusation.

“When he upset, he tend to think in Russian,” the engineer replied, yawning. “I not have to wait for the translation.”

“You hear that much of what he thinks all the time?”

“No.” Del was beginning to sound irritated. “He has zero abilities. He can’t project thought.”

“Are there are a lot of people like that?”

“Not enough.”

“So you have to make an effort?” Sulu concluded. “Like you did back in the valley when we thought the dragon had him?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do that often?”

“Probably a lot less often than he think I do.” Rolling over onto his side, the look on Del’s face clearly said that he decided to give Sulu just enough information to shut him up. “It like if you had a roommate who kept a diary...a really _long_ diary with lots of boring stuff in it about laundry and differential equations and what passes for good food in Russia... So, most of the time, who cares, right?”

“Yeah,” Sulu agreed, hoping this meant that the Cajun was about to tell the thing that would sate his sudden, irresistible hunger for knowledge about telepathy.

“And he keep this diary laying open on a table in the middle of the room every day -- day after day. And some days, you know there gonna be something in it about you or someone you know or something that happen that you want to know about.”

“You might take a little peek, then?”

Del rolled over back onto his back. “It hard not to.”

This information did nothing to sooth the itch in the helmsman’s brain. “What about me?” he asked, deciding to quit being coy and go straight to the point. “Is it that easy to read me?”

Del was silent for a minute. “You not like an open diary, if that what you worried about.”

Sulu shook his head. “I don't think that is what I'm worried about.”

The engineer let another silence lapse without commenting. “If you in trouble...” he said at last. “If anyone on a mission in trouble, I could probably do what I did -- tell if they dead or not, get a general sense of their state of mind... if those were my orders.”

Sulu shook his head again. “Somehow I'm getting the feeling that you're willing to talk to me about what _you_ can do, but you don't want to talk about what _I_ can do.”

The engineer looked at the stars silently.

"So Chekov was right," Sulu concluded.

“About what?”

“There are things that scare you.”

Del turned and looked at him, his black eyes glittering in the firelight.

Sulu took a deep breath and fought the terror that rose up in him as the question he wanted to know the answer to so badly finally crystallized in his mind. “What do you know about what's going on inside my head and why won't you tell me?”

Del just looked at him for a moment, then sat up. “Chekov right about something else, too.”

“What?”

“We gonna have an early morning tomorrow if we gonna be ready by the time them dragons get here,” the engineer said, knocking the dirt off the legs of his pants as if they were in the middle of a conversation about the weather.

“Del...” Sulu pleaded. The engineer sighed, clearly not wanting to explore this topic and yet hating to refuse to help.

“Lemme tell you a Cajun bedtime story,” Del said, coming to an unexpected compromise with himself.

“Okay,” Sulu agreed, surprised and puzzled.

Del poured a cup of Chekov’s bark tea for each of them before he began. “Once upon a time, there a beautiful young girl named Celeste BeauMonde, who live down in the bayou. Not only was she _tres jolie_ , she had all the good gifts. She was smart as a whip and kind as a saint. She could sing like an angel and dance like the devil.”

DelMonde told the story lightly but intensely, like a Voodoo priest relating a teaching tale to an initiate. Every phrase seemed to have a second, deeper meaning. Each image seemed imbued with hidden symbolism.

“All the men in the parish want her, but no man caught her fancy until one day when a stranger pass through. He call himself Monsieur Reynard. He as dark and strange as she was sweet and fair. But despite how her papa fuss, and her mama cry, and all her kinfolk plead, Celeste BeauMonde would have no other.”

A nightbird sang in the distance in a minor key.

“After their wedding, he take her deep, deep, deep into the swamp where even the ‘gators don’t go. To her surprise, they come upon a _grande maison_. ‘This my house,’ say Mr. Reynard. ‘And now it yours, too, _ma cher._ All I ask is that you leave me one room to my own-self.’’

“’Whatever you say, _mon mari doux_ ,’ answer Celeste BeauMonde, good as gold -- but you know the idea of a room where she cannot go start to eat away at her from that moment on.”

"They pass a good time together until the day Mr. Reynard say he got to attend on some business. ‘Mind what I have said, _cher_ ,’ he say to her as he leave. ‘Some things best left alone.’’

The significance of the last statement didn’t seem too hidden to Sulu in the context of their previous conversation.

“Celeste BeauMonde try to be good for a while, but her curiosity get th' best of her. She start to search and search for that room where she cannot go. When she find the door her key will not unlock, it have a carvin’ over the doorway that say, “ _Etre audacieux, être audacieux, mais pas trop audacieux_ – Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.”

“She take a li’l hairpin from her golden curls and open that door right up. There not nothing in that room but a big ol’ box. In carved letters on the top of that box it say, ‘ _Etre audacieux, être audacieux, mais pas trop audacieux de peur que le sang de votre coeur devrait courir le froid_ – Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, else the blood of your heart is bound to run cold.’”

_Why does the Pandora in the story never stop and not open the box?_ Sulu wondered.

“Havin’ gone this far, Celeste BeauMonde could not bear to stop, so she slide another pin from her hair and work that lock ‘til it open.” The Cajun paused and waited for the nightbird to finish its melancholy song. “And there not nothing in that box but th' bones and locks of hair of all Mr. Reynard’s other wives that he done chopped up, ate, and put into that box. And Celeste BeauMonde look around her and can see now that whole house is made of nothing but bone of all the peoples Mr. Reynard has killed. When she see where she at, Celeste BeauMonde’s beautiful hair turn white, her eyes turn to stone, and she turn to a ghost on the spot.”

Although he was anticipating that the plot would twist in this direction, the imagery brought the memory of the moment he’d found out the identity of the Hunter forcefully to Sulu’s mind.

“On a moonlit night, you can still see her walk through the heart of the swamp singin’, ‘Remember me, _mes enfants_ , and be bold, be bold, but not too bold, else the blood ‘o your heart is bound too soon to run too cold.’”

The hot tea in his hands wasn’t enough to take the chill out of the helmsman’s bones that had nothing to do with the cool night breeze.

“If that's a bedtime story,” he said, attempting to be light, “then Cajun children must learn to sleep with at least one eye open all night.”

“It safer for ‘em that way.” Suddenly Del was no longer the voodoo priest giving him a coded story about his past, but just plain Del… Del, the bastard… Del, who wasn’t above screwing with someone else’s head just because they wouldn’t quit bothering him.

“I think that story was the longest answer to a question you've ever given me...” Sulu said slowly.

“I guess so,” he said, draining his cup of tea.

“...And it still boils down to ‘fuck off".”

The Cajun shrugged as he rose. “I just tryin’ to correct your view of me. I not no mute. I can talk to people when I have a mind to.”

Sulu shook his head. Despite the way the engineer was trying to play off their conversation, the helmsman knew somehow that the anxiety that he had seen in his friend was very real. The Cajun had used the story – in the same way he usually used his music – to express his true feelings. Those feelings seemed to Sulu to be ones of undeniable dread connected to their shared past – to the Clave and the man whose name both of them now hated to hear – and an even more intense trepidation of a past that the Cajun refused to even acknowledge. _Whose past?_ The helmsman wondered. _What makes him so disturbed about something he didn’t experience?_

Instead of waiting for these questions to be voiced, the engineer toasted his friend with his flask as he headed for the trail down to the cave mouth. “ _Bonne nuit, mon ami_.”

Sulu sighed, knowing he’d have to content himself with not knowing the answer to the questions this planet raised in his mind or the equally troubling ones this conversation had raised. He tried to clear both from his mind as he poured himself another cup of tea and settled in for a full evening of planning for tomorrow’s potential battle with the dragon who’d stolen the shuttle… and for wishing Jilla were here. “Good night, Del.”

*******

“Damn, that thing got some good eyes on it,” DelMonde exclaimed, squinting into the rising sun. “It already got us spotted. Damn near make a hawk look like he need bifocals.”

The three officers were standing on the top of plateau near the smoldering embers of their campfire watching the dark speck in the distance grow steadily larger.

Chekov pointed a whirring tricorder in the creature’s direction. “I wonder if the creature’s olfactory system augments its optical perception?”

“I dunno,” the Cajun replied. “It tend to think in terms of 'Fire, hot. Shiny, good. Mammals, crunchy yummy treat' ‘stead of 'If I were preparing a report on myself for the Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology, I would be sure to note the following anatomical peculiarities…'”

Sulu was checking the charge on his phaser.

“Too bad. That line of thought would have been considerably more useful to us.” The navigator replied, then turned to the helmsman. “My readings indicate the most vulnerable areas should be the head and the chest.”

“Del,” Sulu ordered, “See if you can warn it off first.”

The engineer closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts find those of the reptile far above them. “Damn,” he sighed.

“What?”

“It surprised that it breakfast making noise that sound like talking,” he said, breaking out his own phaser and checking the settings.

“Try again.”

The Cajun reached out again, being a little more forceful this time. When he deciphered the images in its mind, he gave a short laugh. “Now it wondering if the lichen it ate yesterday making it hallucinate.”

“One more time,” Sulu requested.

DelMonde made a face. “Oh, charmin’…”

“What?”

“It think it bite my head off to see what inside that make a talking noise.”

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid we may have reached the limits of diplomacy,” the helmsman decided grimly. “Phasers on stun. Minimum setting. Minimum dispersal. We’re only trying to scare it off. When it comes around…. On my mark…And… Fire!”

The dragon screeched as three glowing beams hit it. It retreated quickly to a rocky peak opposite of them.

“Minimum setting only has minimal impact,” Chekov noted, as the dragon licked at its chest, looking surprisingly dog-like.

“I don’t want to kill it unless we have to.”

“You may have to,” DelMonde informed his mission commander as the creature gathered itself for a second run at them.

“Okay.” Sulu kept his eyes on the dragon as he adjusted his phaser. “Stay on stun, but increase the intensity to thirty percent. Let’s give it a bigger nudge.”

“You need to aim forward, Noel,” Chekov advised as they raised their weapons. “Anticipate the movement.”

It wasn’t that Del was a bad shot, he just wasn’t as insanely, inhumanly, obsessively good as these two target range junkies. The hand phaser wasn’t designed to be the precise long-range weapon they were forcing it to be. It was primarily a blaster, used when the whites, greens, or pinks of an enemy’s eye were clearly in view. Most Starfleet officers would never bother with adjusting the stun intensity from ten to thirty percent. Many had probably forgotten how to do so since most used only the two settings that his Academy instructor had referred to as “Sleepytime” and “Bye-Bye.”

With a team of regular personnel, Del figured that Sulu probably wouldn’t have ordered this sort of precision firing, but since the helmsman could hit ticks off a moving dragon’s back at nearly a mile away and knew Chekov was ready and able to do the same, he was able to indulge his penchant for marksmanship while at the same time insuring that they didn’t vaporize or unnecessarily wound their target. The choice wasn’t doing much to prevent one team member from feeling like a cross-eyed clown trying out for the Wild Bill Hickok Road Show, though.

“I hit it,” DelMonde retorted sourly.

“You hit the tail,” the Russian said, as the dragon started into a climb. “There’s not many nerve endings there.”

“It seem like the tail harder to hit than the chest,” the engineer muttered defensively.

Chekov raised an eyebrow, but kept his eyes on his target. “Were you aiming at the tail?”

“That a very leading question, young man,” DelMonde replied archly.

Hitting the top of its arc, the reptile used the momentum to plunge downward in what the Cajun could hear him assume was going to be a terrifying plunge. The creature screamed with frustration and sheared off abruptly as two bright beams hit its body once more… and one beam came very close to hitting its foot.

“Try talking to it again,” Sulu ordered.

“It mad now.” Del shook his head, unable to get the thing to pay attention. “It think it breakfast need to shut the fuck up and quit stinging it.”

“Not terribly intelligent, is it?” Chekov said, holding his tricorder up in the creature’s direction to check the damage.

“It smart enough to use tools,” Del reported, catching a plan form in their opponent’s mind. He pointed as the dragon picked out a boulder that it could heft in its clawed feet.

“It’s going to try to drop that on us?”

“Yeah. Apparently mashed breakfast still better than no breakfast.”

“Okay.” Sulu kept his eye on the dragon and it headed to the right and circled around slowly, trying to stay out of range as it gained altitude. “Three-pronged defense. Del, give your phaser to Chekov. When I give the order, concentrate on throwing any thought at it that you think will scare the thing. Chekov, maximum setting, disintegrate. I want you to get the rock without hitting the dragon. I’ll stay on stun and aim at the head.”

Del released a long breath as he handed his weapon to the navigator and tried to think of something that would scare a giant flying lizard that would dive into phaser fire twice in a row. “Here ya go, Deadeye,” he said to the Russian. “Make your mama and me proud.”

The dragon was closing in above them now.

“Chekov,” Sulu said, using one hand to shield the sun from his eyes as he held the other arm out in a very straight line pointing up at the dragon. “If you could sequence your shots…”

The navigator shifted his stance so that one weapon was in front of the other. “Got it.”

“And…” Sulu waited a fraction of a second after the bolder had left the dragon’s claws. “Fire!”

“Sheee- it!” Del took an involuntary step backwards as the stone glowed out of existence with what sounded like a thunderclap.

“Disintegrating the two halves of the stone slightly out of phase…” Chekov began to explain.

“Make big rock go boom,” Del said, using an approximation of the dragon’s simple image/action/effect/emotion pattern of mental expression to describe the event. “The critter and I are both impressed.”

“Enough to leave?” Sulu asked watching the dragon wheel in a dazed circle over them.

“Well, what you do if when you were squirrel hunting and you found some li'l squirrels that made talk-talk and had stingers that make big rock go boom?”

“I’d swear off the lichen for a while,” the helmsman replied, lowering his phaser as the dragon retreated to its rock perch on the other side of the valley.

“And notify the Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology,” Chekov added.

“And call for backup,” Sulu said, correctly interpreting the dragon’s crooning squall as it put back its head and yowled vocally and telepathically for its lair-mates.

“Eatin’ one third of your breakfast beats eatin’ no breakfast,” Del confirmed.

“Damn,” the helmsman swore. “I didn’t want to have to kill one. They seem intelligent… in a ‘fire-bad’ ‘shiny-good’ sort of way.”

“And now we gonna have t’ kill three,” Del reported, interpreting the sensation of new auras of intelligence that seemed to be responding to the dragon’s call.

“Damn,” Sulu repeated. “Can we? Do we have enough fire power to take on two more?”

Chekov nodded and held up his two phasers. “Stingers make go boom.”

“Not take much to turn you into the Great White Hunter, does it?” Del asked, rolling his eyes.

“Mentally I’m preparing an abject letter of apology to the Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology,” the Russian assured him.

“Well, you not need to expect a Christmas card from 'em this year.”

Sulu pointed at a couple of dark spots on the horizon. “And here they come.”

Del turned his head to one side, trying to process the new, more sophisticated flow of image/action/effect/emotion pattern sequences between the creatures. “Hmmm…”

“What?” the helmsman asked, checking back over his shoulder on the status of the first dragon.

“Our pal a li'l more articulate when he be talkin’ to his friends.”

“What are they saying?”

“That, yes, we are really tasty-lookin’ squirrel-monkeys with brightly colored fur, but there no way we can talk or make big rocks go boom,” Del translated freely. “They think he need to lay off the lichen.”

”Talk to them,” Sulu ordered. “Tell them that we come in peace…”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Cajun acknowledged. “The whole JTK intergalactic welcome wagon speech… I’m a’doin’ it.”

“And?”

The engineer shook his head. “These must be stubborn, _tete dure_ , Russian dragons. They not believe I possibly be telepathic… Despite the fact they hear me. They saying, ‘Damn, it really sound like that squirrel-monkey can talk. I wonder how soon that stop after you bite off its head?’”

“It does seem improbable,” Chekov said in defense of his metaphorical co-patriots.

“Oh…” Del held up a hand to stop them from asking more questions while he was trying to decipher.

“What?”

“This seems sorta good,” he reported. “They think you two twins.”

“Why?”

“’Cause you look identical to 'em. Same size. Same markings.”

“And that’s good?”

“Twins are special to 'em -- very lucky… Oh…”

“What?”

“Lucky if you eat ‘em.”

“Oh,” Chekov said. “ _That_ kind of lucky.”

“Yeah. Lucky for dragon. Not so much for twins.”

“Do they have a plan?” Sulu asked as the new dragons settled on peaks near the original one. “Or are they just going to rush us?”

Not only were they quickly developing a plan, Del was a little surprised at how effective it seemed. This group must have experienced hunting troublesome prey several times before. “Our pal gonna draw fire with another frontal assault, while the big one tries the rock trick, aiming to hit us from the left flank. And the green one is gonna sneak up from behind and… Oooo.”

“What?”

“And pick off the red one – me.” The Cajun put a hand to his chest to emphasize. “They assume that I the leader and you two’ll be demoralized and scatter if they get me and bite my head off.”

“They’re obviously not reading _our_ minds,” Chekov said, handing Del back his phaser.

“Okay.” Sulu adjusted his phaser. “On my mark, we each fire – ninety percent stun, minimal dispersal – then fall back to the cave. I still want to avoid killing them if we can. I’ll take the one of the right. Del, take the green one, and Chekov, you hit the big guy.”

The Russian turned to his helmpartner. “Shouldn’t he…?”

The helmsman made a quick sign that indicated that the navigator should be ready to take a second shot at the green dragon if Del’s aim was off.

“Guys,” Del said to remind them of the folly of such subterfuge. “I a telepath, y'know.”

“Then use it to anticipate the creature’s movements,” Chekov suggested encouragingly. “Aim forward so your target will fly into the beam.”

“Thank you, Annie Oakley-o-vich.”

“It looks like they’re going to take their time setting up,” Sulu observed as the dragons flapped their wings without taking off.

“They not sure about our range,” Del reported.

“Okay.” Sulu took a step forward, revising his original plan in response to this new intelligence almost as quickly as he spoke. “Here’s the new play, guys. As your target comes into the edge of range, fire -- aiming for the chest. Fall back to the standing rocks that go down to the cave. Del, get behind the one on the left. Chekov, go right. I’ll stay center. From the rocks, take a second shot -- if you’ve got one. If the first shot doesn’t take them out, they’ll be closer, so aim for the head. Then full retreat to the cave. No heroics, gentlemen. Don’t wait for a shot. I don’t want you to be at a standstill for more than three seconds. If we can draw them in towards the cave, we can pick them off one at a time from point blank range. Got it?”

“Got it,” Chekov said, making the sort of big, showy arc with his arm as he took a bead on his target that people quickly learn not to do when there was even a slight chance that they might miss.

“Yeah.” Del leveled his weapon with the sort of movement preferred by normal mortals.

His dragon suddenly took off to the far right with a burst of speed. It took a zig-zag-ing route over the tops of the trees trying to stay well out of range. He could hear the high-pitched screech as Sulu’s creature reached the top of its ascent and began its dive towards them. The green dragon took this as his all clear to dart in closer.

Del drew in his breath and squeezed the trigger. As if reading the Cajun’s thought, the dragon did a head-feint to the left, drawing the engineer’s fire and diving below the tree line as the shot glowed harmlessly above him.

“Fuck,” the engineer swore, running back to the cover of the rocks. He heard the whine of someone else’s phaser and a shriek as it hit.

When Del took up his new position, his dragon was nowhere in sight. Sulu was sliding into his second position nearby on one knee like he was stealing a base. Chekov was firing a shot that his dragon by luck or design managed to block with the rock he carried.

“Three, two…” Del counted down, in preparation for breaking to the cave mouth. On “one,” though, his dragon’s head popped up in a steep climb out of the valley between the hills.

Again, as if reading the Cajun’s thought, the beast zagged behind Chekov’s dragon as the engineer fired. Del’s shot again went wide, but this time accidentally hit the Russian’s creature in the throat just before the navigator tagged the beast near the eyes with a second shot.

The big dragon reeled backwards. As the engineer saw the boulder escape from the reptile’s claws and drop in a curving path towards the lake, a half-thought formed in Del’s mind. ’What if..?’

Knowing that he had no time for words or argument, Del shot, _“Disintegrate that rock!”_ directly into Chekov’s mind.

Like a well-oiled machine, the Russian spun out of his retreat and back towards the edge of the rock that overhung the mouth of the cave in unquestioning response. In one fluid movement, he changed the setting on his weapon, took aim, and fired as he ran.

The boulder glowed out of existence as it hit the water. Del hoped that was enough as the two of them bolted for the cave.

“What was that?” Sulu asked, skidding to a halt beside them.

“The…” was all Del had time to get out before the roar began. The force of it shook his brain and echoed through the valley.

He didn’t need to look outside the mouth of the cave to know they had woken up the Old Man of the Lake.

“What is it?” Chekov asked, more alarmed by the sight of his two fellow officers clutching their temples than by the bellowing outside.

“We all pissed off the wrong guy,” Del managed to force out from between gritted teeth.

Even Chekov began to shake his head in discomfort as the bone-rattling vibrations continued.

“Think he’ll listen to an apology?” Sulu asked hopefully, keeping his hands pressed to his ears.

“This not even directed toward us,” Del said, pointing outside. “It for those flyin’ sons of bitches out there. Apparently this not the first time our pal from the bottom of the lake had to yell at ‘em for chucking a ball through his front window.”

“Who are you talking about?” the Russian demanded. “What’s making that noise? _What_ are you talking about?”

“There’s a fourth creature.” Sulu answered as the thrumming in his head began to subside. He handed the navigator a tricorder and pointed out across the valley. “It lives in the lake and doesn’t seem like to have things dropped in there.”

“Nice shot, though,” Del complimented his fellow officer.

“Thank you…” Chekov said before realizing, “Were you the one who ordered me…?”

“Those lyin’ sacks of dragon shit…” The Cajun interrupted, taking his hands off his ears and heading towards the entrance.

“What is it?” Sulu followed him.

“They blamin’ the whole thing on us,” he replied, pointing at their foes, two of whom they could see circling their way back over to their side of the valley.

“Can you...?” the helmsman began.

“I’m a’telling him right now,” Del confirmed as the officers walked out into the sunlight.

Two of the dragons were back on their perch on the bald peak. They were making shrill noises of what sounded like protest. From the edge of the natural terrace in front of the cave, the _Enterprise_ officers could see that the biggest dragon was on the ground in the valley below, swinging its head slowly from side to side as if still groggy from the effects of the stun. A fourth creature, bigger than all three flying creatures combined was sliding out of the water, looking ungainly as it smashed trees beneath its massive clawed feet.

“And that they took our…” Sulu continued, trying not to be repulsed by the scaly, bumpy, human-eating dinosaur look of the creature from the lake as it made its way across the landscape like a steamroller.

“Oh hell, yeah,” Del assured him.

The lake creature seemed to be headed more in their direction, but it was hard to tell. It waddled awkwardly from side to side as it tore a path through the valley.

“Well, what does he say?”

“Lyin’ sons of lizard bitches,” Del cursed the flyers. “They say we musta stole that shuttle from a dragon ‘cause little squirrel-monkeys like us not possibly be sophisticated enough to build a beautiful metal egg like that.”

“Well, tell him that…”

“Yeah, if they built it then why it full of things squirrel-monkey sized ‘stead of dragon-sized?”

The lake dragon opened its terrible jaws and emitted another roar that sounded both inside and outside their heads.

“And that… Ouch,” Del rubbed his temple, “is how you say, ‘Everybody needs to shut the fuck up’ in dragon-talk.”

Chekov nodded, steadying himself on a nearby rock. “I think I understand that much of their language.”

“Tell them that…” Sulu persisted.

“They onto something else now…” Del interrupted. “The twin thing.”

Chekov tugged at his uniform tunic. “Should we try to look less…”

“No, no,” Del cautioned quickly. “You see, twins special to Monsieur Du Lac here too. They sacred to him.”

The navigator blinked. “Sacred?”

“Oh, yeah. He very _religieux…_ Twins one of the symbols of his gods.”

“Wow,” Sulu said, but kept his hand on his weapon.

“Now, he a li'l nearsighted,” Del warned. “So he coming up this way to have a better look at us.”

“Phasers?” the helmsman asked tersely.

“I’d say put ‘em away. We not want to make him mad – since he on our side.”

“Is he?”

“It lookin’ that way.” Del nodded. “He come up with an elegant explanation for why I can talk-talk.”

“Which is?”

“I magic.”

“I can see where that would sound reasonable to you,” his roommate commented.

“You see, this whole spot here is sacred for the ol' Monsieur,” Del explained and the noise of the creature approach grew louder and louder. “And like a good Baptist, he come up here to pray and sleep.”

“And he assumes that magical squirrel monkeys like us were drawn here for similar reasons,” Sulu said, taking a few careful steps back from the edge and signaling his fellow officers to do likewise.

“He think that maybe you two are my sacred twin wives… or twin servants, if you prefer.”

“I do prefer the second option,” Chekov confirmed.

“And that we bringing our sacred metal egg up here to start a magical squirrel-monkey family,” Del said, capturing the lake dragon’s utopian picture in words as well as he could.

“Oh, very reasonable,” the Russian agreed facetiously, as trees in the valley below them crunched under the creature’s weight and the dank, lake smell of it grew more overpowering. “But it is evidence of advanced cognitive abilities.”

“The Vulcan Institute of Xenobiology’ll be thrilled shitless, won’t they?” Del said, retreating with his fellows a few steps further.

“I may receive one of their Christmas cards after all,” Chekov replied over the din of crunching trees.

The noise ceased. One giant, green-veined, reptilian eye of Monsieur Du Lac appeared above the cliff face and surveyed them curiously.

“Say hello, boys,” Del suggested, although the smell of the creature alone was almost enough to gag him. “If you two could do something together…”

Helmsman and navigator exchanged a look. “Wave?” Sulu suggested.

“Why not?” Chekov replied agreeably.

They raised opposite hands in the sort of twin-like coordination that comes naturally to long-time helmpartners.

“Hello, Mr. Lake Dragon,” Sulu said, putting what he hoped would be read as a friendly non-edible look on his face.

“Good dragon,” the Russian said. “Nice dragon.”

“It is not a poodle, Chekov,” the helmsman reminded him.

“I almost wish it were,” the navigator replied through his smile.

“You two so cute,” Del commented. “I’d marry you if I hadn’t already.”

“Watch what you’re thinking, Del,” Sulu cautioned. “Is he buying this? Ask him if we can…”

The dragon turned his massive head towards the flying dragon’s perch and gave a roar that knocked all the humans from their feet.

“That mean….” Del began, struggling to his feet.

“Give them back their shuttle,” Chekov guessed. “Dragon seems to be a very straightforward language.”

“The vocalized part is.”

The flying dragons took off nosily. Their flight paths were considerably less stable than they had been before the fight.

“You _better_ run, ya scaly, lyin' bastards,” Del called after them.

“Speaking of lying,” Sulu began cautiously, “You’re not actually telling him that you’re a magical squirrel-monkey, are you?”

“I just ain’t sayin’ I not,” Del confirmed. “The ship not be too far away. When they get here, I sure that Team Logic Force can come up with a way to give him the more simple explanation that no, we just squirrel-monkeys from Outer Space.”

“This species may be sufficiently advanced to be covered by the Prime Directive,” Chekov said.

“So we just smile and nod for the moment,” Sulu concluded.

The dragon emitted a low thrumming noise.

“I hope that’s a happy growl.”

“He offering to show us around,” Del translated. “Take us on a cruise ‘round the sacred lake so we can see the sacred neighborhood.”

“It does realize that we don’t breathe underwater, doesn’t it?” Chekov asked.

“I’ll go,” Sulu said, walking up the giant section of spine that the creature placed within climbing range. “What about you guys?”

Chekov hadn’t moved an inch. “Someone should wait for the shuttle,” he said, reasonably.

“And I be here in the unlikely event that Chekov’s command of Dragon Language fail him,” Del said.

“Okay.” The helmsman disappeared from view as he grabbed on to one of the big knots on the creature’s forehead. “Have fun!”

The two remaining officers stepped to the edge of the cliff to watch as Sulu and the creature made their way in a wriggling path down the avenue of cleared trees in the valley and towards the lake.

Del turned and narrowed his eyes at the navigator. “What?”

“Nothing,” Chekov replied, despite the fact that smug satisfaction was radiating from every pore in his body.

“Okay.” The engineer shook his head in defeat. “How you know?”

The Russian couldn’t resist a small triumphant smile. “That you're afraid of crocodiles?”

The two of them looked down into the valley as the lake dragon that looked like the giant, unattractive ancestor of that Earth species crawled back into the water swishing its long, ridged tale.

“Alligators,” Del corrected. “And I not afraid of 'em… It just ever since one almost took my hand off, I not like ‘em very much…”

“You made an unlimited claim,” the navigator replied as he walked back to the cave’s mouth. “Logic predicts that unlimited claims will almost always turn out to be false.”

The engineer nodded ruefully as he helped his fellow officer, pull the navigational beacon out into the sunlight. “When I said I not scared of nothing…”

“It was improbable that you had absolutely no fears at all,” Chekov confirmed.

“'Cause everyone afraid of something.”

“Fear is a survival mechanism,” the Russian stated, activating the beacon. “The person without fear does not exercise caution and therefore is less likely to survive as long in a dangerous and uncertain universe.”

“So all you had to do was watch and wait…”

“And in an unfamiliar and uncertain environment, my chances were good that you would encounter something that you were…that you didn’t like very much.”

“Smartass,” Del congratulated him grudgingly.

The navigator shrugged modestly. “It was just an exercise in inductive reasoning.”

The two stood and searched the skies for dragons or spaceships.

“It not as dumb as being scared of poodles,” the Cajun reminded his roommate.

This time, though, the Russian was ready with a second salvo. “I estimate that there is a strong probability that you’re uneasy about arachnoids as well.”

“Damn,” Del whistled, impressed. “Where that come from?”

“You consistently use comparisons to spiders and their habitats as pejoratives – i.e. ‘I not know how much sleep I be gettin' in that spider-y lookin’ hole.’”

The engineer frowned at the Russian. “You think you pretty smart, doncha?”

“Well...” The navigator couldn’t find any reason to dispute this logical conclusion.

The Cajun shook his head. “Boy, someday I like to buy you for what you worth and sell you for what you _think_ you worth.”

“That's a barbaric thought.”

“Seeing as how we surrounded with flying dragons and giant crocodiles, a barbaric thought seem most appropriate.” In the distance, Del could barely make out Sulu as a speck on the giant reptile’s back. Feeling contentment radiating from that direction, he wondered if old Monsieur Du Lac was trying to have a little talk-talk with the helmsman. A ripple of anticipation battled with a chill of foreboding as the engineer wondered what would be the consequences of truly unleashing the dark power in the helmsman’s mind – a power whose presence he did his best to ignore without ever questioning why. “I guess we all got our personal dragons to deal with.”

The navigational beacon began to beep, indicating that it was receiving a signal.

“Right on time,” Del said. “Give or take a day or so.”

“I estimate another nine point seven five minutes until they are within range of our communicators.”

“Listen,” the Cajun began slowly. “About the ship getting here and communicating and all that…”

“I could easily be persuaded not to share my conclusions about crocodiles and spiders if I were similarly assured that there would be no further mention of poodles, tap dancing, and -- especially -- slut mongering.”

“Blackmailer,” Del said, as he held out a hand.

“Simple survival instinct,” Chekov explained, shaking it to seal the deal. “Remember who I’m going home to.”

“All right. All right,” the engineer relented, knowing that any information so certain of putting Daffy on the warpath was a legitimate threat to the navigator’s health and well-being. “I try to help keep up the illusion that you a normal Human being.”

The navigator snorted. “And I will help maintain yours that you aren’t.”

The Cajun nodded with satisfaction as he watched Sulu glide out of sight on dragon-back. “Business as usual, then.”

* THE END *


End file.
